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Raspberry Pi as a MythTV frontend

Some years ago I tried a mythtv frontend (from memory it was called XBMC or something similar) on an early Raspberry Pi (PCB dated 2011) but found it too slow to be usable. From memory I think video playback was OK (I had bought the MPEG-2 licence.) but navigating the menus was slow.

I see there's now a mythtv-light frontend and I also have a faster Pi going spare - a Pi 2B v1.1 dated 2014.

Do you guys have any suggestions as to what's the best way to go now? Options seem to be to use the mythtv-light frontend or some non-mythtv package, either of which will connect across the network to my mythtv server. Or buy a Pi 3. Or wait and see if a Pi 4 is released.

My main reasons for wanting to add the Pi to my system are

  1. the server's video card won't do full 1080 and for various reasons it would be a pain to upgrade it.

  1. I would rather locate the server somewhere away from the TV.

So, the basic query is: Do you have any suggestions on which package to use, and on what Pi hardware would be needed for that package?

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James Harris
Reply to
James Harris
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OSMC worked well on my 2B for watching TV and recording until I upgraded to Pi3. Only use for recording in .ts or .mkv. Even on the PI3 .webm is the only conversion that works well.

A lighter alternative (smaller sd card required) is LibreELEC. See

formatting link

(I also have a PiB in Spain running OSMC, but only use it to playback downloads.)

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Chris Elvidge, England
Reply to
Chris Elvidge

XBMC is now called KODI. Menus were too slow on Raspberry Pi 1. At least at the time when I tried it.

I'm running openELEC on a rPi 2B and an ancient mythtv .27 on an old PC in the network. openELEC uses KODI, I hear that libreELEC is the more active fork but I didn't have time to try that yet.

Kodi now has built in support for PVR. So just enable the PVR support, configure and enable the mythtv PVR plugin and you should be good to go.

The rPi is fast enough in the menus and for playing back mpg2-SD in software. 720p h264 plays back fine as well. This is the highest definition I can receive here. I've never heard of a mythtv-light frontend and don't think it is needed on the rPi2

When turning on the Pi it takes some seconds to sync with mythtv and switching channels during live tv has some delay. This is the same on my laptop, so a faster CPU won"t help. The program guide works well for setting up recordings and playing back recordings is smooth and without delay. For more complicated recording rules I still use the old webfrontend of mythtv, mythweb.

So I can definitly recommend using KODI on rPi2 as a client for mythtv.

Reply to
Stefan Enzinger

I recently installed Kodi on a Pi v3. I started with bog-standard Raspbian and simply sudo apt-get install kodi. I'm sure it'll work just fine with a v2.

This is working well. A little googling suggested there was a newer (packaged) version of Kodi for Raspbian, so I followed their advice and installed that one, but the stock one did work fine for me.

Of-course there is now a lot of negativity over Kodi - although it's not really kodi, but all the plugins being supplied in a particular bundle. I'm using the iPlayer WWW plugin to get live and catch-up BBC which is working a treat.

Gordon (in the UK with a TV license if anyone cares)

Reply to
Gordon Henderson

There is another similar tool called MediaPortal? :)

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Reply to
Mr. Man-wai Chang

OSMC (i.e. Kodi) works really well. Don't forget to buy the license key

formatting link

if you need to play MPEG-2 or VC-1 video, otherwise the hardware acceleration uses the free driver rather than the proprietary driver. I find the free driver too slow.

Raspberry Pi 1s are a little slow on the user interface, Pi 2s are fine.

Another Dave

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Change nospam to techie
Reply to
Another Dave
:

nope. the license enables HW acceleration to be used instead of SW decoding. h264 HW acceleration is enabled by default (no need of license), and works without problems until 1080p.

Reply to
jack4747

...

Thanks for all the replies. To summarise what I've understood, in case it helps someone else. the package options seem to be:

Kodi (aka XBMC, the name of the developer) has mythtv and iplayer plugins but doesn't directly support custom mythtv recordings.

OSMC is based on Kodi.

Mythtv-light.

Mediaportal (possibly).

I am not too sure at the moment what advantages the other packages would give over mythtv but best seems to be to use Raspbian and to try them out.

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James Harris
Reply to
James Harris

If you're experimenting, try OSMC + TVHeadend

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Chris Elvidge, England
Reply to
Chris Elvidge

Well, I am going to experiment with how to manage my MythTV backend from a Raspberry Pi. I have many recordings there and an extensive setup which I want to keep.

I am not sure, at the mo, what extras the above packages might add beyond the MythTV features I am familiar with.

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James Harris
Reply to
James Harris

Just to be clear: Setting up single recordings in the guide works fine. As well as pressing the rec button during live tv (as in: record this show, from when I started watching it till it ends. Even if I stop watching).

I see there are options for keyword search and daily, weekly... recording rules in kodi. I have just tried them out for the first time and some seem to work (daily, weekly...), some seem to fail (e.g. keyword search, "sql-error: starttime cannot be null") but that might be due to my ancient mythtv installation (.27)

Watching recordings works as expected.

Reply to
Stefan Enzinger

Thanks. I got the basics of the advice that it's either awkward or impossible to set up custom MythTV recording rules from within Kodi. Just about all of my rules are custom ones so that was an important point.

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James Harris
Reply to
James Harris

Has anyone mentioned webfrontend? You can do a certain amount of customisation of recording rules from that or Mythweb just using a web browser. MythTV 0.28 has both, but webfrontend is supposed to replace Mythweb entirely in some future version, so if webfrontend works for you, use that for preference. This does not limit any of your choices for using other frontends. If you already have a working MythTV 0.28 installation, you should be able to access webfrontend by pointing your browser to: :6544

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Reply to
Jim Price

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